


The First Thing You Have To Know

by Krasimer



Series: Terrible Truths (Secrets Long Held) [3]
Category: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Headcanon, Job offers, Kevin is Inhuman, Monsters, Name Changes, New Blood, Nightmares, Quite Literally, She is named Drew Goddard in the movie, She took a new one when she became the Director, apparently, now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 01:12:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16398566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: “There are five roles that must be filled.” The Director held up a hand, putting down a finger as she listed them. “The Whore, the Fool, the Athlete, the Scholar, and the Virgin.” She waited until Donna nodded before shaking her head. “Two of those are misnamed. They’ve been translated incorrectly. When you take this job, you need to never bring it up, but the first and the last have been translated incorrectly.”“Why do I need to never talk about it?” Donna frowned. “What are they supposed to be?”The Director smiled.





	The First Thing You Have To Know

“The first thing you have to know,” her voice was quiet but somehow still filled the room. “Is that some of your monsters are going to be previous sacrifices.”

Donna took a deep breath and nodded.

The Director turned to look at the screen in front of them and tapped a few keys, the keyboard clacking noisily in the otherwise silent room. “The victims almost always end up in the stable. Well, some of them do,” she looked at Donna again, a glance as she took some scrap of information in. “Here and there, some of the players in this game end up becoming monsters. I’m told it does not happen in other branches – just ours.”

Donna swallowed, then made herself speak up. “Why?”

“No one really knows. The theory is that our stage puts off a unique energy,” the Director turned back to the screens. “Our base is built closer to the sleeping gods. Right on top of them, rather than a mountain or an entire forest away. More influence from those that sleep beneath us, they want an interesting show.”

“So they sometimes put out enough energy to turn the chosen players into monsters we then keep,” Donna stared up at the screen, watching the nightmares in their cages. There, off to one side, she could see the little ballerina that had ended the lives of her friends. “They want the players to choose their own deaths, summon the nightmares that are to punish them, and sacrifice their youth and beauty with the slight chance of becoming a nightmare for someone else.”

“Precisely,” the Director tapped a few more buttons and the screen changed again.

The cameras focused on a singular cube that only had one occupant.

It was a normal-looking man, with mousy brown hair and a pair of glasses with a thin, wireframe. His legs were crossed and his hands were folded in his lap. Unlike all the others, he sat in place and simply held still. If he hadn’t been breathing, Donna might have thought he was one of the living dead.

“Who—”

“His name is Kevin,” the Director sighed. “He and his friends were in the cabin in the sixties. They summoned the Clown. His little sister was the Virgin, that year. Kevin Mayhew, a film student. He died in the cabin, exsanguinated by the monster he and his friends had summoned.” They both watched as Kevin slowly turned his head, making direct eye contact with the camera. “It is interesting,” she took a step back, keeping herself poised. “How he kills.”

“How does he kill?”

“He walks up to them and simply…Drains them.” The Director met Donna’s eyes again. “They empty out in less than ten seconds. His item is the strips of film in the basement, pulled directly from his belongings in the cleanup after the ritual. He can appear as he wishes but the best and easiest way to see him is to look through a camera. He can hide, otherwise.”

“What about his sister? Or any of his friends?” Donna continued to watch Kevin, getting the eerie feeling that he could actually see her. “Did any of them make it? Or become a part of the menagerie?”

“None of them.”

She actually almost felt sorry for Kevin. He had been killed horribly, only to come back as a monster and be left alone. Locked in a cube.

She felt sorrier for the kids who had been turned into his victims, though. He’d been called upon twice since his Becoming, according to the files. Sixty-eight and seventy-one. So close to each other and so many years before the cabin had even been a thought in her own mind. His murders weren’t exactly drawn-out, but they were gruesome at times.

There was so much blood.

Strangely, very little of it hit the ground when he killed. Donna had seen the cleanup photos of him in action. Pale bodies, emptied of all blood, a fear built up from the inevitability of something that just kept coming and coming and coming, never stopping. Kevin could not be stopped by bullets or knives or any other weapon crafted by human hands.

She wondered what it would take to stop him for good.

She didn’t want to find out.

“Some of the things that claim a home in our stables,” the Director’s voice caught her attention again, shifting the camera view at the same time. “Are from other worlds. Other realities. Like this one,” she gestured at the screen. “The Lord of Bondage and Pain, Fornicus. There is a crew that follows him, though we keep them separate for…Obvious reasons.”

On the screen, Donna could see what looked like a man with shark eyes, wearing what looked like leather. Given the circumstances, however, she knew that nothing was what it seemed.

“Or the creature that your friends died at the hands of,” the camera flipped again and Donna flinched back from the screen. It was reflexive, uncontrolled and instinctual, and she cursed under her breath as she watched the monster her friends had been murdered by. There were those teeth that had drilled through flesh and bone, the hands that had pulled throats open and eyes from their sockets.

When it was caged, however, there was something pathetic about it.

It just looked like a little girl.

Like some small child who had dreamed of being a dancer, dressed in a tutu and ballet shoes, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Donna knew how dangerous this one was, knew how bloody and violent things got when it was released, but there was something…

“I have to ask,” she turned to the Director. She was met with a raised eyebrow. “Is it a child?”

“I was told it was a juvenile of it’s species, yes,” the Director sighed. “The only surviving member that has been found, so far. We have many things like that.” She switched the cameras around a couple more times, settling only for a few seconds on each creature. “The nightmares in our stable are almost unique. Some of them come in multiples, stored apart from each other.”

“Keep them separate, keep the operations neater,” Donna added in after a second. “Easier to handle one of something rather than allow that something to be with the rest of it’s group.”

“Precisely.” The Director nodded. “And there is something else I must speak with you about.”

“What is it?”

“There are five roles that must be filled.” The Director held up a hand, putting down a finger as she listed them. “The Whore, the Fool, the Athlete, the Scholar, and the Virgin.” She waited until Donna nodded before shaking her head. “Two of those are misnamed. They’ve been translated incorrectly. When you take this job, you need to never bring it up, but the first and the last have been translated incorrectly.”

“Why do I need to never talk about it?” Donna frowned. “What are they supposed to be?”

The Director smiled. “The ‘Whore’, as they call the first to die, is supposed to be something more along the lines of ‘one who has known another’. It’s all another part of the ritual. Youth and beauty have much to do with the sacrifices, this is the truth, but sex has a part to play as well. Those who help the Director with the arranging of things usually put some poor girl in the role. Shame her for her sexuality, the way she lets herself be touched. They watch her, often, and remark upon her activities.” Her smile turned into a toothy grimace. “They feel as if they are owed the watching, as if she is nothing more than a show for them to enjoy, while at the same time they deride her for how she inhabits herself.”

Donna felt something sick roll around inside of her. “Has there ever been a male one?”

“Oh, yes,” the Director laughed. “I have made certain of that.”

“What is the other mistranslation?” Donna leaned forward, feeling as if the information needed to stay quietly between them all of a sudden. A shiver ran up her spine. “Which other title is wrong?”

“The Virgin,” the Director said it like it was obvious.

And maybe it was.

If those pulling the strings got off on watching a girl have sex just before she died, they would also bring that same perversion into the other typically feminine title. “What is it supposed to be?”

“The Untouched. It refers to one whose blood has not been spilled.” The Director’s voice went softer. “To live or die as their chosen nightmare dictates.” She shook her head when Donna went to speak again. “If anyone asks, you tell them that we work with what we have. We are, after all, playing just another role in this game.”

“Am I the Virgin?” Donna’s voice shook as she thought about it.

Her hands wrapped around Donna’s. “We are the Untouched,” she whispered. “We survived the monsters that destroyed our friends.” Her eyes flashed with something Donna couldn’t name. “The rules are being written by someone else, still. I am the Director and I am not the one with the most power. The mistranslations still stand because someone else wills them to.”

“I’ll change that,” Donna hissed the words out, her jaw clenching tight. Her breathing was coming out in short gasps, her hands shaking in the clutch of the other woman’s. “I swear, I’ll find a way to change it.”

“Good luck,” the Director whispered. “Because it’s your turn now.”

She closed her eyes and pulled away from Donna, only to be swarmed by a cluster of formless people in clean up crew suits. In seconds, the Director – Henrietta – was gone. A man with one of the earpieces she’d been told they’d invented stepped forward. “Director,” he inclined his head, addressing her quietly. “We have some papers that need your signature.”

With a small gasp, barely noticeable in the sudden noise of footsteps still retreating, Donna nodded and took the clipboard he offered her. There was a second of hesitation before she signed them.

She signed them, ‘The Director’.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, don't mind me, just correcting the things that REALLY BUGGED ME about the movie.


End file.
